Barkskins (43 page)

“Those coiled hair mattresses must be changed every few years,” said Mrs. Tubjoy, seeing his flared nostrils.

“I am happy you mention this, Mrs. Tubjoy,” he said. “Shall we not have all the old mattresses burned and replace them with best new?”

On the third floor they entered a room he liked immediately. It was moderate in size but with a large fireplace. In front of the fireplace stood two companionable wing chairs upholstered in faded red brocade. He admired the sun-softened color and suddenly remembered the table with the ivory inlaid ship that Captain Gunn had grudged him.

“Mrs. Tubjoy, could the boy bring my small table in the entryway up at once?”

“Of course. I'll see to it,” she said and she glided from the room and down the stairs, grey and silent.

•  •  •

Alone, he examined the room. The furnishings were of rosewood rather than mahogany, and the bed had plain posts; there was neither canopy nor carved dolphins. He liked the brilliant turkey carpets on the floor and opened a small cabinet—it was empty, and he liked the emptiness. Above the washstand hung a large and slightly clouded mirror and he saw himself in it, the dimmed image of a man who appeared resolute, strong, with no sign that he was unworthy. The windows looked out over the oaks toward a shining strip of sea invisible from his father's room.

He heard them on the stairs. Mrs. Tubjoy came in, followed by the grinning Tom lugging the table and seeming somewhat strained although the table was small. Of course ebony was heavy, ivory was heavy.

“Put it there,” said James to the boy, who stood breathing heavily and gripping the table with white fingers. He pointed to the space before the fireplace and between the wing chairs. The table was correct. This would be his room.

A
visit to the stables was a heady experience. He had his choice of a barouche or a sporty gig, and Billy, the fat-cheeked stableboy, said there were four other vehicles in the carriage house including a green sleigh and a very pretty coach. It was a sunny day; he chose the barouche, finished in grey enamel with silver fittings. Billy said, “Mr. Sedley bought the greys special for this carriage,” and began to harness them. The coachman, Will Thing, came in, stuffing his arms into his livery jacket. He was garrulous and obsequious, sprinkling
yes sirs
around as though casting handfuls of seed on new-raked soil.

Out on the high road he pointed out landmarks and distinguished points, the establishments and houses of leading merchants and men of account. He moved on to the likes and dislikes of Mr. Sedley, and so James came to know his father through the impressions of his coachman.

•  •  •

The Winthrop Brandons lived in a small cottage in Williams Court near two taverns and a devotional bookshop. There was no room for the barouche to stand and Will Thing said he would wait in the yard of the Liberty Cod across the way.

As James walked up the tramped earth path to the door, in his hands his present of a silver dish (wrapped in a length of muslin) for Mistress Brandon, he heard unlikely sounds inside the house: meaty thumps and a shrill cry.

“Kind Jesus, he is beating her!” He stopped on the bottom step and stood irresolute: should he leave and come another time, or knock on the door and perhaps engage with an enraged husband in the flower of fury? Was it not his responsibility to save the woman who had saved him? It was, and he knocked very briskly. There was a hoarse shriek. He knocked again. The house went silent. After long minutes, just as he was turning away, the door opened and Mistress Brandon stood on the sill, somewhat breathless and with heaving bosom.

“Mr. Duke! What a pleasure. Come in, do come in, please.”

He looked at her but could see no signs of ill use beyond her rapid breathing and a disarranged black curl in front of one ear. The pupils of her beautiful eyes were dilated. He followed her into a disheveled sitting room, where opened books covered an octagonal table. There was a sideboard choked with pewter, five doors and a row of sunny windows.

“Mr. Duke, will you not take tea?”

“I would very much like to do so,” he said, resting his gift on a pine chair with a broken rung.

“I will just be a moment. We keep no servant so I prepare everything myself.” She strode out of the room and he sat looking about him. The bookcase, behind its glass-fronted doors, carried the collected expository discourses of many scribbling preachers. He looked at several of the open pages of the books heaped on the octagonal table. All were sermons, and a half-filled sheet of foolscap, pen and ink indicated that the master of the house, Reverend Brandon, was cribbing up filler for his coming sermon. James heard faint sounds in the distance: the rattling of a stove lid, a clinking sound and nearby, a very discreet low moan. He went to the window and looked out, was about to sit down again when there was a slithering sound behind one of the doors. He turned. The door was ajar and through the gap he saw the raw, wet face of a man of about forty, fair hair matted and sweaty, who muttered something between bleeding lips, then, at the jangle of the approaching tea tray, darted away.

“Here we are!” cried Mistress Brandon merrily, coming into the room with the tray. She looked about, but there was no place to put it.

“Just hold this a moment, will you?” she said, thrusting the tray at him. He held it, his mind whirring with curiosity. She swept the octagonal table free of the books of sermons with a strong arm, sent them crashing to the floor. She took the tray from his astonished hands.

“There. Don't mind all the old books—just Mr. Brandon's work. He has a perfectly good study but prefers to spraddle his books on the tea table. He
says
the light is better, but I think he does it to annoy. He was struck by lightning two summers ago and has been somewhat difficult since that day.” The great dark eyes gazed on him so intently he began to stammer and blurt.

“I have known men—mariners—others—struck by, by lightning bolts myself, others, you understand, and when it does not kill them, hurt them, outright, it disorders their minds—often—to a marked degree. Some recover, some never. Some.” And he went on, describing several cases of lightning-induced mental derangement.

“I fear that is the case with Mr. Brandon. I live in expectation that he will do himself a mortal injury so disordered are his mental faculties. He has great trouble preaching. He wanders about the streets at night.” She held out a plate of walnut cakes and he took one. She said, in an aggrieved tone, “These walnuts I gathered with my father last season. I picked out hundreds of nut meats and stored them for winter use. If Mr. Brandon made a better living we might have money to employ a gardener and kitchen help who would gather the nuts. It is
very
trying to scrimp along. I was not brought up to live in this manner. I was quite spoiled on my visit to my mother's aunt in England. Her husband is a cloth merchant and everything in their country house is of the best quality. They have a city house as well, in London, and I wish you could see it. A veritable treasure.” Again the dark gaze.

“Mr.—Parson—Minister—Brandon was unable? To accompany you?”

“Quite unable. He has a little flock of parishioners and feels the responsibility. Also, his behavior is somewhat unpredictable and I thought it better not to bring him into polite society. A neighbor woman looked after him while I was away.”

He took the bull by the horns. “While you were preparing tea I thought I saw—Mr. Brandon, I assumed. He peed—no,
peeped
in that door,” James said and he pointed in an agony of embarrassment. “He looked somewhat—out of order?” In fact, he thought Mr. Brandon had looked swinishly drunk.

“I have no doubt,” she said. “He is always out of order. It is best to take no notice of his high jinks when he is in his fits.”

There seemed nothing to say to this. She cast her eyes down. A long silence fell. He sensed she was listening for noises in the back of the house. He studied her face, trying to combat the power of the black eyes by finding faults with her nose—too long—and her mouth—thin and wide.

Unable to think of more conversation—after the disclosures of the damaged husband it was too late to introduce the topic of weather—James Duke, suddenly glib, began to rattle off details of his good fortune, his surprise and delight at receiving a large inheritance from his long-estranged father.

“You see,” he said, “I was sent away from home at a young age to become a maritime officer, and over the years we never corresponded. My mother died at my birth and my father always blamed me for it. Still, I have survived and now come into a good situation.”

Mistress Brandon, turning her attention wholly on him, said, “But what a fortunate outcome! We all dream that a rich relative will shower us with gold and manses, but you are the first one I have ever known who has experienced such a turnover. What will you now do, live happily ever after? Is your wife ecstatic?”

“I will participate in the affairs of the family company, Duke and Sons, in what capacity I am not yet secure. And as to the other, I have no wife. I have ever been single.”

“Indeed!” cried Mistress Brandon. “Did you say Duke and Sons? The great timber company?” Her eyes were forest pools.

“Yes. It is the family business and I am joining it. I have been asked to serve on the Board—as my father did. But the truth is that I am somewhat nervous as I know very little about the timber trade.”

“My dear Mr. Duke! Perhaps I may be of help to you. I am the daughter of Phineas Breeley of the Breeley Lumber Contractors in New Brunswick. He has had many dealings in Maine. As a girl I assisted my father in his paperwork. I know something of the business and all that I know I shall impart to you. And then we must find you a wife.”

•  •  •

James visited the Brandons again the next week. Mrs. Brandon let him in.

Mr. Brandon was nowhere in sight—“closeted with another fit,” said Mistress Brandon, whose first name, he learned, was Posey. She smiled, she looked at his lips when he spoke, questioned him about his cousins and the Duke business, asked his advice on the choice between a deep blue shawl and one of rose cashmere, and then, from the corner cupboard, she pulled out a sheaf of closely inscribed pages held together by a dressmaker's pin detailing the structure and proceedings of her father's timber contracting business—his work as timber looker, the cheapest kinds of lumber camps, where to find the best men (Penobscot men, found in Bangor). He thought he had never met so intelligent and fine a woman and told her so. To himself he thought that not only were her eyes beautiful, but she had the grace of a swan, the voice of a dove. Batting those beautiful eyes and blushing from cleavage to hairline, she begged him to call on her again the next week, when he should have digested all the workings of her timber business scrawls. She would answer his questions and even quiz him if he thought it beneficial. But before then came the dinner at the Trumbulls'—seven the next evening. He would at last meet the Duke cousins.

•  •  •

It was a bitter cold and blowy evening spitting snow. Would spring never come? He arrived at the Trumbull house one minute before seven, and in the near dark saw the loom of a brick building. A black man in black livery opened the door for him. At the same moment the cousins and their wives arrived in their coach. They exchanged names and greetings in the vestibule while Mr. Trumbull urged them into the parlor, where a snapping fire spread out billows of heat. A bald-domed giant in an exquisite French-embroidered waistcoat stood near the fire holding a glass. This was the law partner, Josiah Tendrill, and he crushed James's hand saying, in a blast of brandy, “Very like, very like indeed.”

Cousin Freegrace Duke was plump and short, breathing with asthmatic stertor. Freegrace's brother, Edward, was a large heavy man like his father, George Pickering Duke. Neither resembled the backwoodsmen of James's imagination. Freegrace's wife, Lenore, was a pale beauty with smoky eyes and a flaxen chignon, who would attract attention in any gathering. James was astonished. How had such a fat little man got such a beautiful wife? Edward's wife, Lydia, was of a more common type, brown braids wound around her head, and a habit of clearing her throat before she spoke.

They all kept glancing at James, and Freegrace finally said, “Forgive the scrutiny, but you are uncommon similar in appearance to Sedley. It is as if he went away for six months to the fountain of youth and tonight has rejoined us.”

James did not like the constant references to his father as the shaper of his appearance, however true they might be. A maid brought hot toddies for the gentlemen and glasses of sherry for the ladies. They spoke of the unseasonable weather and the cold.

“Truly unusual the way this winter hangs on,” said Mrs. Trumbull.

“Ah, James,” said Lenore, “you will harden up in Boston. The dulcet climate of England is in your distant past. Here we must wrap in furs to keep alive. Going out in the winter or a spring like this one is always a dangerous adventure.”

Josiah Tendrill told of a great snowstorm that had come in his childhood. “The snow fell for five days and when it ceased the drifts were up to the eaves of three-story houses. It took fifteen men three days to shovel us out.”

The dinner was long, but not a single word was spoken about the business, Duke & Sons.

At last an English pudding streaked with blue brandy fire came in, and when it was reduced to a rubble of crumbs the ladies retired to Mrs. Trumbull's sitting room and the men to the library for cigars and imported cognac.

“I beg you tell me more of the family,” said James. “I remember a large number of cousins. Are not some of them involved in the family business?”

Edward sighed. “Time has not been kind to the family. We lost almost an entire generation. Your uncle Piet on a visit to Virginia took the cholera in the very warm summer of—what—years ago now, and did not survive the attack. He is buried there. Aunt Patience Deckbolt suffered mental exhaustion and finally passed away in her sleep. Three of her daughters still live in the city with their husbands and families and you shall meet them at a future gathering. None of their husbands—well, I shall forbear to describe the husbands. Patience's grandson Cyrus is a clever young man and shows some promise for the company. We employed him. In time he will ascend the ladder of success. You will meet him when we have our meeting in June. Your half siblings, Sedley's second family, have all repaired to Philadelphia. Maury, the eldest, who is Sedley's only other son, your half brother I suppose we might say, works for a banking firm and I wish he had remained in Boston as he is certainly good timber.”